Do you know that there are just countless people in the world, trying to make a fortune from all sorts of materials they try to find from the wild? Take for example, ambergris, it is quite a dark trade, the amount of rivalry between scavengers ... [Read More...]
There are two obvious lines of soil agarwood on the market, one from vietnam, and the other from Indonesia. The Vietnamese line consists of 3 types of soil agarwoods, yellow, red and black soil. In Indonesia, some call it yellow soil, but it is ... [Read More...]
Oops, another hiatus in writing. Had been caught up in much work and was also away on a trip to Taiwan. As I should be re-starting to warm myself up by writing more posts.. I thought I would start with a simple, but important subject, installing ... [Read More...]
I had received some requests on how to actually go about making incense sticks, and there were comments on my earlier post that I had not show how the incense dough was made prior to extrusion, and how I managed to get such straight sticks and scale ... [Read More...]
oops! long overdue articles as usual. beeen reallly really busy studying and researching on tea pots and making incense sticks but i've not forgotten about writing. Sometimes, when people handle agarwood, they are seen pouring over the ... [Read More...]
Ever since a few years ago, Oud had become the buzz word in western perfumery, all the major western perfume houses now carry different "oud" products. I had friends that would ask me from time to time to check out this "oud spray" or that ... [Read More...]
Managed to chance upon something uncommon recently, heartwood from a single old tree (estimated >100 years) of northern malaysia origin. The heartwood was undergoing some serious compaction as the tree was growing, the fibres are crumbly, the ... [Read More...]
Every yixing pot collector probably would have heard of the legend of seasoning yixing pots, that the longer you use it, one day, by just adding hot water to the pot, you can get tea! It is a myth and a huge misconception, partially due to poor ... [Read More...]